When I write for teens, I feel I can cut through everything and get to the bare bones. I can get straight into the emotional world of the character.

Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.

You don't fight for peace sister,' Nahara told me, 'You embrace it.

Holding a tear back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you're left with a stub of a neck and nothing more.

When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.

The evening had turned sweet and blue.

That was the way love was, invisible, there whether or not you wanted to see it or admit to it.